Comments on: I archived w/o labeleling. Are my emails forver hidden?

Question: I archived w/o labeleling. Are my emails forver hidden?

hasna — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:54:43 -0800

About a year ago, I accidentally archived a ton of old emails in my Gmail account, without putting any labels on any of them. (I thought I knew how archiving worked at the time, but obviously I was wrong)

Aside from just randomly searching for keywords every time I need to find one of those archived emails, is there any way to access them? Preferably en masse, so I can add labels to them once and for all.

I understand Gmails "great and wonderful" search ability, but I've found that a number of times, the obvious keywords aren't in the email I'm looking for, especially registration/sign-up confirmations/info, where the sender's email address isn't the same as the site I signed up with.
(I hope that makes sense... )

Maybe there's a Greasemonkey script out there somewhere I can use?

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:59:52 -0800

Click the link for "All Mail"? In the box on the left.

By: nitsuj

nitsuj — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:03:49 -0800

Is there anything that distinguishes these emails from the other ones in your inbox? For instance, is the to: address different? If there's no piece of data that separates these archived emails from the other emails in your inbox, there's not much you can do.

By: suncoursing

suncoursing — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:04:12 -0800

You can get only archived mail if you search for "-label:inbox -label:sent", without the quotes, in the search box that's right at the top.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:07:09 -0800

Yeah, if you want to exclude the inbox do what suncoursing says. Search operators include:

in:inbox
in:trash
in:spam
is:starred
is:read
is:unread
and
label:whatever

See the Gmail search help.

By: bensherman

bensherman — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:07:24 -0800

type this into your search box:

-in:inbox before:2008-01-01

By: kidsleepy

kidsleepy — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:23:19 -0800

The simplest answer is GuyZero's. Archiving just removes them from the inbox - All Mail will get you what you need.

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:57:52 -0800

This is a greasemonkey script that sounds like it would do what you want.

By: milestogo

milestogo — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:28:09 -0800

In case the question is not as complicated as some are making it out to be, clicking "All Mail" in the top left corner will show you all the mail you have recieved (and not deleted). In Gmail, "Archiving" a piece of mail simply means that it is no longer labelled as "inbox."

By: soelo

soelo — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:04:16 -0800

To find archived messages with no label, search this:
"-label:inbox -label:blog -label:computer ..." and just keep adding your labels. If you do this once, you can bookmark it and get the same search back without having to retype all the -label:x

By: hasna

hasna — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:00:35 -0800

Thanks everyone! The combination of everyone's answers helped me immensely. :)